In the poll conducted by Piper Jaffray, 53.3 percent of consumers said they expect to buy an iPhone 5 in the near future. That’s about consistent with 54.9 percent who chose the iPhone 5 in October, and still a bit higher than 47.7 percent who said they’d choose Apple in September.

“We believe this is a positive that demonstrates the majority of U.S. consumers want an iPhone 5 even following the launch craze, and despite the Maps issues that have been widely noted,” analyst Gene Munster said.

While more than half the respondents said they planned to buy an iPhone 5, 35.3% of respondents said they’ll choose a device running Google’s Android OS.

Windows Phone was the preference for 6.5% of those surveyed, with Blackberry catching the eye of 4.9%.

The firm also did an analysis of what users are “tweeting” about on the Twitter social networking site. A search was conducted for the keyword “iPhone”, as well as related words such as “bought,” “shipped” or “purchased.”

Based on the analysis of the Twitter posts, Piper Jaffray believes that purchase trends for the iPhone 5 are ahead of those for Apple’s previous handset, the iPhone 4S. 2.5 months after launch, the demand index for the iPhone 5 is up between 30 and 40 percent over the iPhone 4S.